Two officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs who allegedly defrauded the agency of $400,000 will walk away with the taxpayer money they took after receiving demotions and unspecified pay cuts as punishment.
Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves were both accused of manipulating a VA program meant to relocate agency employees who transfer long distances to take jobs within the VA. Rubens fraudulently netted more than $274,000 and Graves more than $129,000, according to the agency’s inspector general.
Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said he was “flabbergasted” by the VA’s decision to let the two women keep the taxpayer money they siphoned from the program.
“This is not a situation in which VA can have it both ways,” Miller said in a letter to VA Secretary Bob McDonald Monday. “In demoting Rubens and Graves, VA has already admitted what they did was wrong. Consequently, the department’s failure to recoup the money Rubens’ and Graves’ unethical behavior enabled them to benefit from defies all logic.”
Miller noted the VA “aggressively” goes after veterans or their surviving family members when they accidentally receive overpayments from the agency, but allow its own executives to pocket bonuses or benefits they obtain illegally.
Both Rubens and Graves invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify when the House VA Committee attempted to question them about their abuse of the relocation program earlier this month.
Alison Hickey, the VA’s former top benefits official, stepped down from her position in October amid controversy over the inspector general’s findings.
Hickey declined a congressional request to testify about the relocation benefits scheme. The VA’s watchdog found officials had used the program to get around prohibitions on giving raises to employees.
Graves, who allegedly pressured another VA official to transfer so she could take his job, was reassigned to the Phoenix VA hospital, where a national scandal involving a cover-up of patient wait times erupted last year.
The same day the VA announced it would not fire Rubens and Graves and instead shuffle them around within the agency, the VA also announced it had named a scandal-plagued official from the Vermont facility to run the Phoenix hospital.
“VA’s handling of this situation effectively gives corruption and fraud among department employees an official VA seal of approval,” Miller told the Washington Examiner. “By openly tolerating corruption of this scale, VA’s top leaders are only encouraging more dishonesty and fraud among the department’s workforce.”
